Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Friedrichs and the UFT/NYSUT/AFT

Sean raises so many interesting points and angles, whatever is left of my hair hurts.

Clueless in Seattle

When the Supreme Court rules in the Friedrichs
case to end the ability of public sector unions to collect agency fees
from non-members, we can likely anticipate something along the lines of a
mass panic, widespread angst and people like Weingarten and Mulgrew
declaring yet another victory. NYSUT will be torn between a twitter
blast and videotaping ourselves doing a Last Tango dance. Lily and her
posse at NEA will read Randi's memo and do whatever it says but they'll
stretch it out for a few days to make themselves look more deliberative.
They will fool nobody just as they did with their Hillary vote.

Lily just started following my on twitter. She must be a glutton for punishment. Or maybe there is a fake Lilly out there. The AFT and NEA Hillary endorsements will be a factor in any post-Friedrich's defections.

Lily has her own problems with the NEA Hillary endorsement, as chronicled by Mike Antonucci at EIA. A few of Mike's gems:

Sean, who was recently elected to a position in the local union, focuses on the AFT/NYSUT situation.

So let's try
looking at it this way and trust me I barely trust me but maybe this is
the pony buried in that huge room of horse manure. If NEA and AFT are
unable to collect money from members who simply check a box that says
"Bugger Off Randi" on their deduction card, can you really see any
future or present use for Randi let alone one that's worth the $550K
she's collecting now? And trickling down the line -- as we all now these
things do since Ronald Reagan told us they would -- does anyone think
we need a Punchy Mike or a Karen McWho? An Andy Palotta or a Marty
Messner?As they say at AA: We think not!

...what good do either of
the two major union presidents do teachers? They ignore us on Common
Core. They pay lip service to ending high stakes testing but there's no
balls to any wall on the issue. It's just whining that's easily tuned
out. They ignored us on Bernie Sanders and threw their weight (not ours)
to Hillary effing Clinton a Gates crony and former Wal Mart board
member who supports The Core and The testing and will give us the same
F.U. the current resident of 1500 Pennsylvania Ave. gave us just as soon
as he counted up the teacher votes he collected.

The current regimes
serve Randi and Lily and a small band of merry pranksters who wouldn't
know a smart board from a dry eraser. They are out of touch and out of
step and they don't even have to give a shit because they have the
process loaded up to keep them in power and keep teachers from getting
any real representation. Anything that unloads this parasitic self
serving dead weight from leadership positions in the teacher union ranks
is a good thing in my somewhat jaded book.

To my way of thinking, the union leadership may also be looking for that silver lining - getting rid of most of the people who would oppose them and solidifying their hold on power even in a smaller union.

Sean has a bit of that same view regarding TFA:

Our current
state in B-Lo with the T.F.A. bacteria is that we are somehow stuck with
them as they are technically considered B-Lo teachers. I look forward
to cutting this umbilical cord and setting them adrift once they are
offered the chance to disaffiliate themselves with our union, one I am
sure they will pounce on. Once we're no longer stuck with them I think
we set sail for the course Pittsburgh and other places have taken in
bidding them adieu and encouraging them to avoid the door hitting them
in the ass on their way out of town. Told you my glass was half full.

The current opposition in the unions won't go. But maybe some will move to another stage - urging disaffiliation and the formation of a new union, like Steve Conn is doing in Detroit. For the first time I have heard some of these people talking about that idea.

What if people who leave the unions who are committed unionists truly begin to start looking elsewhere?

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